Making Easy Money

The power of hands-on learning is indisputable. But when it comes to investing your money in the stock market, however, making a beginner’s mistake can cost you more than just your self-esteem. Thankfully, the web makes it easy to practice with virtual money.

There are a multitude of online investment games like Investopedia and gnuTrade that play with virtual money, but not all of them are easy for beginners. Here are five of the best free (because you shouldn’t have to spend real money to play with fake money) online games for getting your feet wet.

1. Wall Street Survivor

Invest $100,000 in virtual cash via drop-down menu choices. A friendly cartoon version of stock guru Mark Brookshire helps you make your final decision by providing some rating numbers when you input a stock. These include a rating for survivor sentiment, fundamentals, technical and a Motley Fool class='blippr-nobr'>Ratingclass="blippr-nobr">Rating.

For additional help choosing stocks, the site has an impressive resource library that spans beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. Start with Investing 101 and consider taking advantage of the community forums if you have specific questions. Those who need a little help getting started can also choose to adapt one of the preset portfolios created by proven traders.

While the $100,000 competition is most popular, anybody on the site can create a contest. Prizes vary, but most often consist of competitive pride.

2. HowTheMarketWorks

Owned by the same company as Wall Street Survivor, this game is great for investors looking to gain experience with a new type of portfolio. In addition to stocks and indexes, there are options to experiment with Forex portfolios, penny stocks, mutual funds and short selling.

Beginners can execute market order-based trades in a “fun mode” without worrying about things like set hours, maximum number of trades per day, per stock and order expiration. A “realistic mode” amps up the complexity after they’ve mastered the beginner level.

Players can manage up to three stock portfolios and three Forex portfolios on the site at once. For each portfolio, they select a starting value between $100 and $500,000 and set how much virtual commission you are charged per trade.

The competition aspect is optional. General monthly contests give each player $25,000 as a virtual starting point. Other public contests include challenging restrictions like “short sells only” or “penny stocks only.” Users can create their own password-protected games as well, which is a feature that teachers find helpful for creating class competitions.

3. Young Money Stock Market Game

Young Money Magazine’s stock exchange game is easy to learn but also fairly realistic, which is a hard balance to strike.

Realistic aspects include a virtual commission that’s taken out of each trade, adhering to market hours and rules about how you can invest. Unlike many investing games, trades are made at a real-time price. Learning aspects include convenient help icons on key terms and an intuitive tabbed interface.

The site runs a monthly contest with a $100 (real) cash prize that goes to whoever gained the highest percentage. Players can also create their own contests or join other user-made contests.

4. MarketWatch Fantasy Earnings Trader Game

MarketWatch will run this mock stock market contest for a total of four weeks, awarding the winner of each week with an iPad. It’s on week three right now, but there’s still time to get in on the competition for week four.

You must have your selections picked before the week starts on Monday. The shares that you select are “purchased” at Monday’s open and will “sell” automatically at Friday’s close.

The catch is that all players can only use the 15 to 20 symbols selected for each week. The companies are selected by the game owner for companies that are projecting their earnings during each week. Lining up picks is easy — players simply drag the company’s logo to their trading card and designate if they want to sell short or go long.

Although there are some pros playing, this game is especially manageable for beginners due to the limited stock options for each week.

5. UpDown

Like Young Money’s game, UpDown has helpful icons that explain key terms for beginners. More comprehensive resources in the education center mercifully cover even the most basic of investing concepts.

Community features, like the opportunity to collaborate with a group and to see the most-bought and most-sold stocks, are also helpful for beginners. The “watch list” tool provides a convenient dashboard for monitoring potential picks.

UpDown sponsors a monthly contest that rewards players who beat the market with real cash.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Lessons to Learn from Web Startups/> - 20 of the Best Resources to Get Your Startup Off the Ground/> - 5 Startup Tips From the Father of Gmail and FriendFeed/> - 6 Ways to Recruit Talent for Startups/> - 10 Essential Tips for Building Your Small Biz Team

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, H-Gall

For more Business coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Businessclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Business channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by HubPages CEO Paul Edmondson on how Hubpages succeeded in amassing visitors.

After the recent TechCrunch post about HubPages, we received several questions about how HubPages got to 39 million unique visitors per month.  Here’s how we did it:

Four years ago, during our launch in August 2006, we wanted to do three main things to create a successful social content community: first, we wanted to make it easy for authors to create a one-page topical website; second, we wanted to drive traffic to the author’s content; and third, we wanted to share the majority of the revenue back with the author.

We had planned for natural search to be a major source of traffic, but it wasn’t until November of 2006 that we started to get measurable traffic from search engines.  To this day, we continue to refine our platform to help authors on HubPages to have the best opportunity to show up in the natural search results.  One of the key metrics we learned was about the longevity of content.  Content created on HubPages peaks in traffic on average nearly three years after it’s created.  This knowledge helped our business become more predictable.  For the author, creating a HubPages article is like putting a little bit of money in the bank that is going to increase its value over the next three years and then continue at that level for the foreseeable future.  The large quantity of content that was created early in the life of HubPages dramatically increased in revenue over 3 years, and allowed us to continue to grow the company.

We became a metrics focused company.  The two key drivers of our business are Hub production and revenue per thousand Hub views.  Based on these drivers, we developed a model that allowed us to do sophisticated micro-marketing including search engine marketing to attract writers.  Through analysis of Hubs created by new authors, our models are able to predict a close estimate of the traffic and revenue that a new author will generate over various time intervals. This prediction model has been significant in our growth.

In the early days, we decided we didn’t want to be the arbiter of quality or try to control what people wrote, but we soon discovered that high-quality authors and advertisers did not feel comfortable with the fully open publishing platform that included adult content. So, in July of 2007, about a year after our launch, we modified our terms of service and took leading steps in the social content category to become a porn-free site.  The short-term impact was over a 30% drop in traffic, but it reaped long term gains.  We also continued to build anti-spam technologies and put in place requirements for publishing on HubPages that improves the overall quality.

Then we wanted to give insight to authors about the type of content we saw working well on HubPages so that they could earn more. We started hosting contests about writing on evergreen topics.  We started incorporating analytics into each page of the site that showed authors their traffic sources.

We continue to invest in specialty tools that teach authors what pages to link to with the Interlinking Tool and how to refine the titles of their Hubs with the Title Tuner Beta.  By taking the data we collected, and putting it inline with the tools, authors became more successful on our platform.

HubPages is a set of technologies, but we really are about authors.  We took pro-writer stances by letting the author choose what they wanted to write on, and giving them ownership of their content, so that the revenue they earn can increase over time.  As the author community grew, we built features that fostered communication – like the ability to follow and compliment other authors.  As a result, HubPages’ reputation as a writing community continues to grow.

Now, going on our fifth year of business and with nearly 140% growth in the last 12 months in terms of visitors, I can see the site growing well into the future based on our three original tenets of making it easy to create content, driving traffic and sharing the revenue.

Small Business <b>News</b>: Marketing Mambo

It's a dance step every small business must master and arguably the most important especially in the beginning of your small business. Marketing encompasses.

Timothy Karr: Fox <b>News</b> Tries to Foreclose on Sesame Street

Every time PBS and NPR have come under attack, the American public has risen up in protest to defend -- not defund -- it. Whatever the rationale, Fox News' ongoing witch hunt tactic is a proven loser.

Er, great <b>news</b>: George Lucas may be planning new “Star Wars <b>...</b>

My instinct is to shudder; most of you, I suspect, will react the same way. And let's pause here to appreciate how amazing that is. So reviled are the prequels that news of new entries in the greatest sci-fi franchise in movie history ...

bench craft company complaints
bench craft company complaints

Small Business <b>News</b>: Marketing Mambo

It's a dance step every small business must master and arguably the most important especially in the beginning of your small business. Marketing encompasses.

Timothy Karr: Fox <b>News</b> Tries to Foreclose on Sesame Street

Every time PBS and NPR have come under attack, the American public has risen up in protest to defend -- not defund -- it. Whatever the rationale, Fox News' ongoing witch hunt tactic is a proven loser.

Er, great <b>news</b>: George Lucas may be planning new “Star Wars <b>...</b>

My instinct is to shudder; most of you, I suspect, will react the same way. And let's pause here to appreciate how amazing that is. So reviled are the prequels that news of new entries in the greatest sci-fi franchise in movie history ...

bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

The power of hands-on learning is indisputable. But when it comes to investing your money in the stock market, however, making a beginner’s mistake can cost you more than just your self-esteem. Thankfully, the web makes it easy to practice with virtual money.

There are a multitude of online investment games like Investopedia and gnuTrade that play with virtual money, but not all of them are easy for beginners. Here are five of the best free (because you shouldn’t have to spend real money to play with fake money) online games for getting your feet wet.

1. Wall Street Survivor

Invest $100,000 in virtual cash via drop-down menu choices. A friendly cartoon version of stock guru Mark Brookshire helps you make your final decision by providing some rating numbers when you input a stock. These include a rating for survivor sentiment, fundamentals, technical and a Motley Fool class='blippr-nobr'>Ratingclass="blippr-nobr">Rating.

For additional help choosing stocks, the site has an impressive resource library that spans beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. Start with Investing 101 and consider taking advantage of the community forums if you have specific questions. Those who need a little help getting started can also choose to adapt one of the preset portfolios created by proven traders.

While the $100,000 competition is most popular, anybody on the site can create a contest. Prizes vary, but most often consist of competitive pride.

2. HowTheMarketWorks

Owned by the same company as Wall Street Survivor, this game is great for investors looking to gain experience with a new type of portfolio. In addition to stocks and indexes, there are options to experiment with Forex portfolios, penny stocks, mutual funds and short selling.

Beginners can execute market order-based trades in a “fun mode” without worrying about things like set hours, maximum number of trades per day, per stock and order expiration. A “realistic mode” amps up the complexity after they’ve mastered the beginner level.

Players can manage up to three stock portfolios and three Forex portfolios on the site at once. For each portfolio, they select a starting value between $100 and $500,000 and set how much virtual commission you are charged per trade.

The competition aspect is optional. General monthly contests give each player $25,000 as a virtual starting point. Other public contests include challenging restrictions like “short sells only” or “penny stocks only.” Users can create their own password-protected games as well, which is a feature that teachers find helpful for creating class competitions.

3. Young Money Stock Market Game

Young Money Magazine’s stock exchange game is easy to learn but also fairly realistic, which is a hard balance to strike.

Realistic aspects include a virtual commission that’s taken out of each trade, adhering to market hours and rules about how you can invest. Unlike many investing games, trades are made at a real-time price. Learning aspects include convenient help icons on key terms and an intuitive tabbed interface.

The site runs a monthly contest with a $100 (real) cash prize that goes to whoever gained the highest percentage. Players can also create their own contests or join other user-made contests.

4. MarketWatch Fantasy Earnings Trader Game

MarketWatch will run this mock stock market contest for a total of four weeks, awarding the winner of each week with an iPad. It’s on week three right now, but there’s still time to get in on the competition for week four.

You must have your selections picked before the week starts on Monday. The shares that you select are “purchased” at Monday’s open and will “sell” automatically at Friday’s close.

The catch is that all players can only use the 15 to 20 symbols selected for each week. The companies are selected by the game owner for companies that are projecting their earnings during each week. Lining up picks is easy — players simply drag the company’s logo to their trading card and designate if they want to sell short or go long.

Although there are some pros playing, this game is especially manageable for beginners due to the limited stock options for each week.

5. UpDown

Like Young Money’s game, UpDown has helpful icons that explain key terms for beginners. More comprehensive resources in the education center mercifully cover even the most basic of investing concepts.

Community features, like the opportunity to collaborate with a group and to see the most-bought and most-sold stocks, are also helpful for beginners. The “watch list” tool provides a convenient dashboard for monitoring potential picks.

UpDown sponsors a monthly contest that rewards players who beat the market with real cash.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Lessons to Learn from Web Startups/> - 20 of the Best Resources to Get Your Startup Off the Ground/> - 5 Startup Tips From the Father of Gmail and FriendFeed/> - 6 Ways to Recruit Talent for Startups/> - 10 Essential Tips for Building Your Small Biz Team

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, H-Gall

For more Business coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Businessclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Business channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by HubPages CEO Paul Edmondson on how Hubpages succeeded in amassing visitors.

After the recent TechCrunch post about HubPages, we received several questions about how HubPages got to 39 million unique visitors per month.  Here’s how we did it:

Four years ago, during our launch in August 2006, we wanted to do three main things to create a successful social content community: first, we wanted to make it easy for authors to create a one-page topical website; second, we wanted to drive traffic to the author’s content; and third, we wanted to share the majority of the revenue back with the author.

We had planned for natural search to be a major source of traffic, but it wasn’t until November of 2006 that we started to get measurable traffic from search engines.  To this day, we continue to refine our platform to help authors on HubPages to have the best opportunity to show up in the natural search results.  One of the key metrics we learned was about the longevity of content.  Content created on HubPages peaks in traffic on average nearly three years after it’s created.  This knowledge helped our business become more predictable.  For the author, creating a HubPages article is like putting a little bit of money in the bank that is going to increase its value over the next three years and then continue at that level for the foreseeable future.  The large quantity of content that was created early in the life of HubPages dramatically increased in revenue over 3 years, and allowed us to continue to grow the company.

We became a metrics focused company.  The two key drivers of our business are Hub production and revenue per thousand Hub views.  Based on these drivers, we developed a model that allowed us to do sophisticated micro-marketing including search engine marketing to attract writers.  Through analysis of Hubs created by new authors, our models are able to predict a close estimate of the traffic and revenue that a new author will generate over various time intervals. This prediction model has been significant in our growth.

In the early days, we decided we didn’t want to be the arbiter of quality or try to control what people wrote, but we soon discovered that high-quality authors and advertisers did not feel comfortable with the fully open publishing platform that included adult content. So, in July of 2007, about a year after our launch, we modified our terms of service and took leading steps in the social content category to become a porn-free site.  The short-term impact was over a 30% drop in traffic, but it reaped long term gains.  We also continued to build anti-spam technologies and put in place requirements for publishing on HubPages that improves the overall quality.

Then we wanted to give insight to authors about the type of content we saw working well on HubPages so that they could earn more. We started hosting contests about writing on evergreen topics.  We started incorporating analytics into each page of the site that showed authors their traffic sources.

We continue to invest in specialty tools that teach authors what pages to link to with the Interlinking Tool and how to refine the titles of their Hubs with the Title Tuner Beta.  By taking the data we collected, and putting it inline with the tools, authors became more successful on our platform.

HubPages is a set of technologies, but we really are about authors.  We took pro-writer stances by letting the author choose what they wanted to write on, and giving them ownership of their content, so that the revenue they earn can increase over time.  As the author community grew, we built features that fostered communication – like the ability to follow and compliment other authors.  As a result, HubPages’ reputation as a writing community continues to grow.

Now, going on our fifth year of business and with nearly 140% growth in the last 12 months in terms of visitors, I can see the site growing well into the future based on our three original tenets of making it easy to create content, driving traffic and sharing the revenue.


bench craft company complaints

Small Business <b>News</b>: Marketing Mambo

It's a dance step every small business must master and arguably the most important especially in the beginning of your small business. Marketing encompasses.

Timothy Karr: Fox <b>News</b> Tries to Foreclose on Sesame Street

Every time PBS and NPR have come under attack, the American public has risen up in protest to defend -- not defund -- it. Whatever the rationale, Fox News' ongoing witch hunt tactic is a proven loser.

Er, great <b>news</b>: George Lucas may be planning new “Star Wars <b>...</b>

My instinct is to shudder; most of you, I suspect, will react the same way. And let's pause here to appreciate how amazing that is. So reviled are the prequels that news of new entries in the greatest sci-fi franchise in movie history ...

bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

Small Business <b>News</b>: Marketing Mambo

It's a dance step every small business must master and arguably the most important especially in the beginning of your small business. Marketing encompasses.

Timothy Karr: Fox <b>News</b> Tries to Foreclose on Sesame Street

Every time PBS and NPR have come under attack, the American public has risen up in protest to defend -- not defund -- it. Whatever the rationale, Fox News' ongoing witch hunt tactic is a proven loser.

Er, great <b>news</b>: George Lucas may be planning new “Star Wars <b>...</b>

My instinct is to shudder; most of you, I suspect, will react the same way. And let's pause here to appreciate how amazing that is. So reviled are the prequels that news of new entries in the greatest sci-fi franchise in movie history ...

bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

Small Business <b>News</b>: Marketing Mambo

It's a dance step every small business must master and arguably the most important especially in the beginning of your small business. Marketing encompasses.

Timothy Karr: Fox <b>News</b> Tries to Foreclose on Sesame Street

Every time PBS and NPR have come under attack, the American public has risen up in protest to defend -- not defund -- it. Whatever the rationale, Fox News' ongoing witch hunt tactic is a proven loser.

Er, great <b>news</b>: George Lucas may be planning new “Star Wars <b>...</b>

My instinct is to shudder; most of you, I suspect, will react the same way. And let's pause here to appreciate how amazing that is. So reviled are the prequels that news of new entries in the greatest sci-fi franchise in movie history ...

bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints